What is a Disruptive Technology
A disruptive technology or innovation changes the way organizations conduct business and also the entire market landscape. This is an inflection point or a paradigm shift that affects how the business is conducted and how it affects the end user. However, not all innovations can be termed as disruptive.
Cloud Computing as a Disruptive Technology/Innovation
Cloud computing has been a buzz word in Information Technology (IT) for some time now. From a buzzword to adoption, cloud computing is seen as a paradigm shift in how businesses are planning the future course of action. For example, Software as a Service (SaaS) in one of the ways cloud computing is being eagerly adopted by business organizations. The biggest advantage is that organizations need to only pay for using the software, without the need to worry about infrastructure and trained manpower to maintain the software and the infrastructure. It is the responsibility of SaaS providers to look for speed, uptime, and infrastructure as a whole, including information safety and security. This helps the organization outsourcing this part of the business and focus on their prime business objectives.
Factors Contributing to the Growth of Cloud Products and Services in the Future
Organizations view cloud computing as a viable business option to delegate some of the mundane and routine tasks to specialized organizations. This also means cloud computing is beneficial except for the fact that data privacy and information security are some of the concerns for the organizations to adopt the cloud. The vendors are not far behind so far as alleviating the concerns of the businesses adopting cloud. They have come up with three types of cloud implementation for the businesses – private, shared and hybrid. Organizations that deal with critical data, where any data breach may break the organization, may opt for private cloud, completely hosted in their premises. Shared and hybrid as the names say are two other versions of cloud hosting. There have been quite a few early adopters of the cloud, however some sectors like banking and finance are quite paranoid about relinquishing their private data to any third-party, and they may be the last of such sectors that may adopt the cloud. Hence, we see that from being a buzzword, cloud computing has become a serious business proposition for various sectors, and there will be quite a few early adopters to this paradigm.
How to Create Product Offerings and Services in this Area
Since the cost of datacenters, related infrastructure and its maintenance are quite high, mid-segment sectors and those in the lower strata of business may want to purchase a part of the cloud as a reseller. They may purchase what they want to provide to their clients, and may ask for a fee to those they sell their offerings to. Consulting is another major are which businesses having an in-depth knowledge of cloud and its implementation is concerned.
As of now, IT majors like Amazon, SalesForce, RackSpace, Microsoft and few others have the wherewithal to provide a part of the cloud to the resellers, and at the same time become a host for the cloud computing needs of various industry segments. One of the key challenges is to gain the confidence of the clients so far as data integrity and information security are concerned. Despite challenges like these, cloud computing has risen above the fledgling state into a fully viable alternative with a host of businesses being early adopters of cloud computing. The key reason as the adopters feel is that they have to pay less for the same thing that they used to do in-house, and also they will be able to focus on their key business objectives. Time will tell where the cloud services will land, but the industry is quite sure that it will be a disruptive force that will be a game changer so far as conducting the business is concerned.
Does Cloud Computing be an Area of Focus for Organizations? Why or why not?
We see that some organizations already have quite a few offerings for the cloud from advisory services and a host of others as they make a foray into the cloud computing arena. Services organizations have to rightly position themselves as to what services they can provide. If they have great datacenters, they may provide hosted solutions to their clients, especially for the software they want to sell. Companies are not sure if this would work for a reseller model, but they feel that a great chunk of revenues may come from there. Even if cloud may just be an in-thing, it is a great wave to ride, especially for the early adopters.